CHUD.com Community › Forums › POLITICS & RELIGION › Religion A-Z › Does Evolution cause Religious Fundamentalism?
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Does Evolution cause Religious Fundamentalism?

post #1 of 35
10/19/07 at 10:08am
Thread Starter 
Interesting little article regarding the "Wisdom of Crowds" systems in comparison to evolution may be responsible for people holding onto misguided beliefs because the concept is counter-intuitive to them.

http://karmatics.com/docs/evolution-...of-crowds.html

Quote:
Does fundamentalist religion cause the rejection of evolution?
or is it the other way around?

Conventional wisdom says that the primary reason why so many people do not accept Darwin's theory of evolution is that they find it threatening to their religious beliefs. There is no question that religion is a big part of the reason behind the large number of people who reject evolution. But I am convinced that just as often, the cause and effect is reversed: people hold onto their fundamentalist religious beliefs because evolution by natural selection -- the strongest argument against an Old Testament-type creator -- is so counter-intuitive to so many.

I arrive at this conclusion in a somewhat roundabout way. I have long been fascinated with systems that tap into the "wisdom of crowds" -- systems that, in fact, have much in common with Darwinian evolution. Such systems doubtfully conflict with anyone's religion, and yet, I see the same sort of resistance to them as I see to evolution. The arguments against them are remarkably similar.

This hypothesis, if borne out, suggests that advocates of reason -- moderates, atheists, and the science minded -- might consider a different tact if they wish to convince more people to reconsider their fundamentalist, anti-scientific beliefs. It may be easier to first go after this non-intuitiveness, starting with these places where the conceptual difficulty is not exacerbated by the conflict with their comforting and culturally embedded religious belief.
"Evolution-like," wisdom of crowds systems:

Below I cover three separate systems, each of which has strong similarity to Darwinian evolution, each of which seems to elicit a "but it just can't work" response, and none of which conflict with any religion I know of. They are:

1. Wikipedia -- online encyclopedia that anyone can edit
2. Prediction markets -- speculative market which predicts future events, such as the outcome of elections
3. Recommendation systems -- systems which categorize and recommend content (such as movies, music and books) based purely on ratings given by others

1. Wikipedia:

Most people who actually use the Wikipedia online encyclopedia on a regular basis recognize that it is an amazing resource, and is getting significantly better as time goes on. However, I have spent a lot of time debating with intelligent people who simply reject that Wikipedia can be accurate or reliable, given that it can be edited by anyone.

Of course, it is true that Wikipedia has been vandalized often, that many of the entries contain poorly written sections, and that some of the facts presented are dubious. I don't suggest anyone use it to verify that the mushroom they found in their backyard is safe to eat. Nevertheless, the science journal Nature published a study in 2005 concluding that Wikipedia fairs quite well when compared to Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of accuracy. A study by IBM [pdf] in 2004 found that vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly - so quickly that most users will never see its effects. Meanwhile, Wikipedia has 10 times the amount of content as Britannica, is growing much more rapidly, and, most importantly, is being refined and improved every minute of every day. (not to mention, it is available online for free!)

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales described the online encyclopedia as being "like a sausage: you might like the taste of it, but you don't necessarily want to see how it's made." In a Nature magazine blog accompanying the study mentioned above, Timo Hannay said that "frankly, I still can't get over the fact that it works at all." Indeed, the problem most people have with Wikipedia's quality and accuracy seems to have more to do with their knowledge of how it is made, rather than any observed problem with the end results.

There is no question that there is something unsettling about the idea of a resource that can be edited by anonymous internet users. We would expect that many, if not most, of the edits will be of poor quality. The natural assumption might that the quality of the end result will be the average quality of all the edits -- but nothing could be further from the truth.

Comparing it to evolution, an edit of Wikipedia might be considered equivalent to a genetic mutation. A mutation, of course, is non-directed...that is, "random." It could be bad or good, but most of the time it is bad. If we were simply the average of all mutations that predated us, we would be nothing more than a pile of goo. And yet we are not.

The reason that Wikipedia is as good as it is (and the reason that living organisms are as sophisticated as they are), is not due to the average quality of the edits (or mutations). Instead, it is due to a much harder to observe process: selection. Some edits survive, while others quickly die. While one can look at the history of a Wikipedia article and see each and every edit, it is much harder to tell how many potential editors looked at an article, subconsciously thought "I doubt I could improve this much," and chose not to try. Each of these can be considered a "selection event", and the number of such events vastly outnumbers the actual edits. Selection is the heart of what makes Wikipedia -- as well as Darwinian evolution -- work.

As much as evolution impresses us with its ability to turn countless random mutations into sophistication, it isn't without its downsides. Every time we see a person or animal that suffers from a severe birth defect we see the cruelty of the process, but we also recognize that such a mutation will probably not survive more than a generation or two due to the power of selection. Likewise, when we see glitches in Wikipedia (whether due to vandalism, someone pushing an agenda, or just bad writing), we are seeing the "random" part of the process in action. Again, we generally see that selection kicks in rapidly, and the glitches disappear.

This difficulty in seeing and understanding the power of selection is why, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, people will claim that Wikipedia must be a poor quality source of information. Luckily, though, the end results are there for everyone to see, and most people judging it on end results alone seem to agree that it is an excellent source of information. And unlike living things, no one can easily doubt that Wikipedia is indeed created in the way that we are told it is.
Continued....
Reply
post #2 of 35
10/19/07 at 10:10am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
2. Prediction Markets:

One of the purest examples of "wisdom of crowds" is prediction markets, where speculators can bet on the chances of future news events, such as the outcomes of sports events or political elections. For instance, at intrade.com, I can see that (on the day I clipped the data at right: October 11 2007) the market thinks that Hillary Clinton has about a 46% chance of being elected president, while Rudy Giuliani has 15% and Mitt Romney has less than 9%. This isn't the percentage of people who are expected to vote for each candidate (as polls try to predict), but the actual percentage chance of winning -- a very different thing. In fact, today it gives Al Gore around 10% chance, and he isn't even running. The market is not just guessing how people will vote and how those votes will break down by state, but it is factoring in the probability of Gore winning a Nobel Peace Prize tomorrow, and if he will in turn decide to throw his hat into the ring. In effect, it tries to take into account everything that may factor in -- things that polls alone can't reach.

Politics - 2008 Presidential Election Winner - Oct 11, 2007
ContractBidAskLastVolChge
2008.PRES.CLINTON(H)
Hillary Clinton M 46.147.046.1108587-0.6
2008.PRES.GIULIANI
Rudy Giuliani M 15.115.215.122057-0.1
2008.PRES.ROMNEY
Mitt RomneyM 8.28.68.716243-0.0
2008.PRES.THOMPSON(F)
Fred Thompson M 7.07.57.08927-0.2
2008.PRES.GORE
Al GoreM 8.610.68.663115-0.8
2008.PRES.OBAMA
Barack ObamaM 6.86.96.819932+0.2
2008.PRES.EDWARDS
John EdwardsM 2.52.62.588980
2008.PRES.McCAIN
John McCainM 2.22.32.222331+0.1
2008.PRES.PAUL
Ron PaulM 3.03.13.014536+0.8
2008.PRES.BLOOMBERG
Michael BloombergM 0.30.60.35444+0.0
2008.PRES.HUCKABEE
Mike HuckabeeM 0.50.60.545920
2008.PRES.RICHARDSON
Bill RichardsonM 0.10.20.14374+0.0
2008.PRES.GINGRICH
Newt GingrichM 0.10.20.17376+0.0
2008.PRES.BIDEN
Joe BidenM 0.10.20.14153+0.0
2008.PRES.DODD
Chris DoddM -0.10.11420
2008.PRES.WARNER
Mark WarnerM -0.10.110790
2008.PRES.ALLEN
George AllenM -0.10.14850
2008.PRES.FIELD
Field (any other candidate)M 0.30.40.34411+0.0

The way this works is actually rather simple. For instance, if I think Clinton has a greater than 46% chance of winning, I can buy a "contract" on her for $46. It will pay $100 if she wins, $0 if she loses. Or, I can turn around and sell the contract in a week or two, hopefully for a few dollars more than I paid (if her market price has gone up). Alternatively, I could bet against her for $54. Like any market, the price of each item adjusts according to supply and demand.

It should not be surprising to hear that a great many people, when told of how prediction markets work, will claim that they can never produce meaningful results. After all, the market price, and therefore the prediction, comes solely from random people on the internet who decide to take a wild guess at who is likely to win. Sure, they are putting their hard earned cash on the line, but that doesn't mean they are experts. Certainly the opinion of an expert -- who has studied all the polls, and understands statistics and the math of the electoral college -- would produce a much more accurate prediction than just the average of the opinions of lots of John Q. Public's.

And yet, that isn't the case. Prediction markets turn out to be remarkably accurate, typically more accurate than any individual expert can predict, as non-intuitive as it may seem. Like Wikipedia, prediction markets also tap into the power of selection, but the most dramatic similarity they share with evolution is their equilibrium seeking behavior.

Imagine that lots of random people come in and make bad guesses at who will win the election. The price of the contracts will then vary significantly from what the best expert would predict, resulting in an unstable (i.e. non-equilibrium) situation. Now all it takes to make some easy money is to consult with such an expert and buy the contracts whose prices are the furthest from the experts' estimates. If it is indeed this easy to make money, the market will attract lots of people, including institutional investors who have the ability to invest enough to quickly move the price back to where the experts predict. Meanwhile, those experts who consistently predict badly will tend to eventually pick another line of work which they are better at, while those who are best at picking will make lots of money doing so, and will therefore tend to be there with cash in hand whenever the prices stray far from their predictions. Each expert tends to gravitate toward the specific things that they might have special expertise (or inside information!) on and therefore has the best chance of out-predicting the other experts. Over time, it becomes harder and harder to consistently outguess the market, no matter how good you are.

As much as this may make logical sense, this sort of equilibrium-seeking process is exceptionally difficult to directly observe. All we can look at is the individual transactions, but we can't see all the people who might have been attracted to a particular contract had they thought that it would be relatively easy to make money. And we can't directly see the statistical pressures that are constantly keeping the prices at a stable equilibrium.

Evolution, of course, has similar equilibrium-seeking behavior. Imagine an animal that, were its earlobes shaped slightly differently, would be ever so slightly better able to hear the sounds made by potential prey. No matter how long you watch such animals, you would be hard pressed to find an actual situation where that subtle change would mean the difference between life and death. But as long as there is a statistical difference, a suboptimal earlobe is an unstable situation, waiting to be corrected. And, typically it will be, in surprisingly short order. The cumulative effect, of course, is what we see around us in nature: an absolutely breathtaking degree of adaptation in planet Earth's life forms.

Such equilibrium-seeking behavior, whether in markets or in evolution, seems to defy intuition. The problem is that when you look closely, at the level that human observation works the best, all that is visible is a whole lot of slop. It is only when you step back far enough to see things from a statistical point of view does the true precision of the process come into view. Clearly, this is very, very hard for many -- if not most -- people to do.
Continued...
Reply
post #3 of 35
10/19/07 at 10:12am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
3. Recommendation systems:

Like many online vendors, movie rental service Netflix has a recommendation system: it allows users to rate movies they have watched, and, based on these ratings and the ratings of others, offers recommendations of movies the user has yet to view. This is a form of machine-learning known as collaborative filtering.

Last year, Netflix launched a contest, where they offered a million dollars to someone who could write software that does the job better than Netflix's own "world-class movie recommendation system." Specifically, the winner has to beat Netflix by 10 percent. I tried my hand at the contest, and quickly beat Netflix by around 3% (putting myself at 8th place a few weeks into the contest), but eventually gave up as I was competing against a lot of seriously smart people who had done their PhD's on this very type of problem, while I was basically winging it. A year later, contestants are getting rather close to the million dollar prize, with about 8.5 percent improvement.

The contest made available the ratings of half a million real Netflix users, for 18,000 movies. The total number of ratings in the set is about 100 million...quite a large amount of data. Contestants are asked to predict an additional one million ratings, unknown to anyone but Netflix, given a user id and movie id for each one. Contestants are scored based on how far their ratings differ from the actual ratings.

While the contest attracted a lot of smart people with deep knowledge of machine learning, it attracted all types. In the forums on their web site, the discussion seemed to all be about one thing: how do we get additional data about the movies? (examples here, here, and here) Contestants wanted to be able to download and use information such as the director, the actors, the year made, whether it won any awards, how it did in the box office, etc. But mostly, they wanted to know the genre: whether it was science fiction, horror, romantic comedy, drama, documentary, etc. After all, if we are trying to predict which movies a particular user will like and which they won't, the genre is absolutely critical.

Since the dataset did contain the movie title, it was possible to get this data from elsewhere (say, IMDB.com), but not without considerable expenditure. What interested me, though, was how steadfast these people were in declaring that the this information was so critical to being able to make sense of all the data and do reasonable predictions. I debated with a few of them, and found it impossible to convince them that such data was completely unnecessary, and that the purely numerical data supplied in the original dataset was quite enough to very accurately categorize movies, detect the tastes of users, and predict their ratings on the additional set of movies.

While the algorithm I came up with was unable to win the contest (well, given the time I had available to put into it), it certainly worked well. And unlike any other algorithm I have seen for collaborative filtering, mine is one that is easy to explain to people who don't have advanced math degrees.

The idea is that I needed to put each movie, and each user, into a "neighborhood," which roughly equates to "genre." There is a science fiction neighborhood, a comedy neighborhood, a horror neighborhood, and so on. But the neighborhoods have blurry boundaries, just as real neighborhoods typically do. "Alien" would be somewhere between the science fiction and horror neighborhoods, while "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" would be somewhere between the science fiction and comedy neighborhoods. Each user would live in a neighborhood, closest to the type of movies they prefer, and furthest from those they dislike.

To do this, my program starts by giving each user, and each movie, a random position in space. That is, each gets a value for X, Y and Z representing its position. For each of the 100 million ratings, the program simply adjusts the distances between each item: if a user likes a movie, it moves the user and movie closer to each other by a tiny amount. If the user dislikes a movie, it moves the user and movie further away from one another. The program iterates over and over, until the positions stabilize: that is, an equilibrium is reached. This takes quite a few hours, but once it has done it, small changes (such as modifying the data, or modifying a parameter within the program) take very few iterations to re-stabilize the model.

If a movie is near a user -- in the same neighborhood, so to speak -- it can be predicted that that user will probably like that movie, even if the user did not specifically rate it. Movies that are universally liked tended to move toward the center of the model ("Shawshank Redemption" being closest to center), disliked movies moved toward the outside. In practice, I found that giving 12 or so dimensions, rather than just 3, worked a lot better, allowing a much richer categorization, and allowing each neighborhood to be adjacent to a great many other neighborhoods. There are several other layers of complexity in order to get the best results, but the gist of the approach is just as simple as described.

What was striking to me was that this system, iterating over a massive amount of sloppy, low precision data, could organize the model with such stunning precision. I could type in the names of two movies, and ask "how similar" they are, and the results were almost always exactly what I would expect. I could type the name of a movie, and get a list, in order, of the top 20 movies that are seen as most similar. And it did quite a good job at the assigned task, predicting how users would rate movies. Those who claimed the process couldn't work, after seeing the results, were shocked.

The point, of course, is that this system is very evolution-like, in that lots of messy data, with very little apparent "intelligence," processed by a simple iterative algorithm, can find sophisticated equilibria with a great deal of precision. Looking directly at the raw data, such as at an individual user's set of ratings, would indicate a lot more slop than is apparent in the final model. The system doesn't "know" that a movie is a science fiction movie, any more than natural selection "knows" why a particular mutation in the DNA increases the chance of an animal surviving to adulthood. Nonetheless, it works, against all intuition.
continued...
Reply
post #4 of 35
10/19/07 at 10:13am
Thread Starter 
...
Quote:

In the past, when I have made the case that conceptual difficulty is to blame for people's failure to accept evolution, a common response has been "But in secular parts of the world, such as Scandinavia, people don't seem to have a problem with evolution." And this is indeed true: there are probably few atheists who reject evolution. Of course, this only shows correlation, not causation, but I will certainly concede the point that if there were no religion -- or the prevailing religion in no way conflicted with evolution -- most people would probably buy into evolution. Without the idea of divine creation (and its immense cultural support), people would have no choice but to look to evolution to explain the living things around us. Even if mentally challenging, it would be hard not to accept, given the lack of alternative explanations for life.

While I am not suggesting that counter-intuitiveness is the only reason people reject evolution, I would instead suggest that the two factors -- fundamentalist religion on the one hand, and the conceptual difficulty of evolution on the other -- are propping each other up. If one were to fall, so might the other. But removing the influence of religion is nearly impossible. It is deep in the culture, so short of physically moving someone to a different environment, it can't simply be removed, and it can't easily be argued away.
An example of the power of animation to to make an otherwise difficult concept (in this case, the "quick sort" algorithm) easier to understand
(graphic by Wikipedia user RolandH)

Removing the conceptual difficulty of evolution-like concepts, though, might be a much lower hanging fruit that has been largely ignored. In addition to the written word, a good start might be making graphical illustrations and animations that let people "see" otherwise hard to visualize processes; for instance, the equilibrium-seeking process I described above for providing movie recommendations might be a prime candidate to illustrate. There are a great many other things that could be demonstrated with smartly written text or cleverly designed graphics that could gradually break down people's resistance to concepts similar to -- but simpler than, and more easily observed than -- biological evolution. Only then, when comfortable with these more elementary concepts, are people likely to be receptive to evolution itself.

This approach is not patronizing, nor is it "framing." It's just good teaching -- starting with the less challenging, and moving to the more challenging, while keeping each step self-contained. Imagine showing a modern computer to a person who has never even seen a mechanical clock, an electric light bulb or a pocket calculator: you would expect the person to be convinced that it must work by magic. The idea that human beings made such an item would likely be seen as being absurd. When a person is convinced that the whole concept is absurd, it is unlikely that he is going to be receptive to explanations of each little part.

Likewise, for someone who has been raised with the notion that all plants and animals were created by an intelligent being, the idea of evolution is just as large a conceptual leap. Even just considering the possibility is likely beyond their capability. We need to provide stepping stones -- self contained, non-biological systems that can be explained and accepted on their own. The concept of gradualism -- the "slow, cumulative, one-step-at-a-time" process described in Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable -- is central to evolution. Can we apply such gradualism to the teaching of evolution as well?
Reply
post #5 of 35
10/19/07 at 10:47am
Quote:
The point, of course, is that this system is very evolution-like, in that lots of messy data, with very little apparent "intelligence," processed by a simple iterative algorithm, can find sophisticated equilibria with a great deal of precision. Looking directly at the raw data, such as at an individual user's set of ratings, would indicate a lot more slop than is apparent in the final model. The system doesn't "know" that a movie is a science fiction movie, any more than natural selection "knows" why a particular mutation in the DNA increases the chance of an animal surviving to adulthood. Nonetheless, it works, against all intuition.
Are there people who argue that evolution can't work because the system doesn't "know" what works? If so, that's a hopelessly naive way of looking at the world.
Reply
post #6 of 35
10/19/07 at 12:28pm
Interesting article. Completely misses the mark, but not a bad read.

He doesn't say it, and he should, but I'm guessing he's talking about American Christian religious fundamentalists. It's unclear from the article, and at some times you wonder if he's talking about every person with a religious belief, or a subset. I'm going to assume he's talking about modern Christian fundamentalist.

He's making the wrong headed assumption that these people don't believe in evolution because the concept doesn't seem intuitive to them. I think that's false in most cases, in this context Christian fundamentalists are literal minded when it comes to the Bible, that's it. It doesn't mean they can't grasp scientific concepts, or think in an abstract manner. Their belief mandates that they interpret the Bible literally, it's as simple as that.

They are wired to reject evolution, because they see it as a threat to their fundamental belief system, "sola scriptura" to the max. It's interesting that these groups came from the Protestant movement, but Lutherans have no problem with evolution. It's just these modern protestan-like churches that are mainly US based that have gone in full blown wacko mode and reject fundamental things like these.

Ironically, even in the early Church people were not necessarely this literally minded. Even the Church fathers were more flexible with their interpretations of the Bible, but again the belief system in these modern fundamentalist Churches reject these interpretations and force people to be much narrow minded.

So no, charts and animations of evolution won't help much here, what is needed is a religious change in these organizations to revisit how they interpret the Bible. Ironically, it almost demands a new kind of "reformation", not science for dummies lectures.
Reply
post #7 of 35
10/19/07 at 1:27pm
Thread Starter 
He does initially state that the fundamentalists are threatened in and of their own accord. His point was that there was an underlying human problem with "Wisdom of Crowds" systems that tends to to reinforce peoples disbelief in them, which explains why so many religious people aren't interested in looking at their own religion in an alternative manner. I think he's a bit naive in thinking utilizing an alternative teaching method would change too many positions, but his comparison of systems is a pretty interesting read all by itself.
Reply
post #8 of 35
10/19/07 at 1:56pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Death Surge
He does initially state that the fundamentalists are threatened in and of their own accord. His point was that there was an underlying human problem with "Wisdom of Crowds" systems that tends to to reinforce peoples disbelief in them, which explains why so many religious people aren't interested in looking at their own religion in an alternative manner. I think he's a bit naive in thinking utilizing an alternative teaching method would change too many positions, but his comparison of systems is a pretty interesting read all by itself.
I think Dawkins approaches this problem much more directly and succinctly in "The God Delusion." Essentially, there are two genetic predispositions in human that give rise to the religious belief.

1)The Causation/Correlation tendency. For proto-humans, over-correlating data would not be a big deal. For example, the belief that your sacrifice of a goat heart to the fire god led to a successful hunt the next day probably, at worst, results in a waste of time. However, believing that the rustling bushes behind you correlates to a fleeing deer rather than an attacking cave lion would be fatal. Survivorship would favor the over-correlator, rather than the under-correlator.

2)The "listen to your elders" tendency. Supposedly, we love free-thinkers and critical thought in the U.S. But, among proto-humans, evolution would strongly favor those who instinctively listen to the instructions of adults. Experimenting on which mushrooms will kill you is genetically inefficient: individuals born with a desire to integrate and believe knowledge passed on by elders (even if much of it is religious gobbledygook) would be more likely to survive. This is one explanation why religious beliefs tend to only possess those who are indoctrinated in their youth.
Reply
post #9 of 35
10/19/07 at 2:02pm
Interesting arguments, but pointless in the end. He's making the incorrect assumption that the reason these people don't believe in evolution is because it doesn't make sense to them. It almost seems that the author believes these people are fundamentalist Christians because they believe in Creationism, rather than the other way around, they are Creationists because they are fundamentalist Christians. Big difference.

I'm not sure if wikipedia is the best way to explain evolution, but it doesn't matter, he's not tackling the real issue here.
Reply
post #10 of 35
10/19/07 at 2:45pm
I agree with the captain it is a problem of literal mindedness, and it a argument that goes back thousands of years. James was a literalist and Paul was not, as an example. Augustine of Hippo made the argument against literalism, but by the time Galileo Galilei the Catholic Church was literal minded. Some groups, maybe even the majority of Christian groups are literal mined, but not all are. My personal belief is that biblical inerrantism is idolatry has won me not many friends among the fundamentalists.
Reply
post #11 of 35
10/19/07 at 2:50pm
Literalist Christian fundamentalist are the minority globally, it just doesn't seem like it when you live in the US.
Reply
post #12 of 35
10/19/07 at 3:02pm
That was an interesting article. I can't agree with it though, because at least for me evolution seems to be much simpler and sensible as a concept than creation. ElCapitan is right. It's not evolution's complexity as a theory that explains fundamentalist's rejection of it. Rather it's a completely voluntary and self imposed restriction they place on their minds.
Reply
post #13 of 35
10/19/07 at 4:04pm
Instead of these smaller systems, why not just use capitalism for the comparison? A lot of people (funnily enough, a lot of conservative, religious people) already accept that the free market can generate order from disparate elements, with no central planner. Why not just compare this to evolution? Why can't evolution be the free market of genes, with its own "invisible hand"?
Reply
post #14 of 35
10/19/07 at 4:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by James Kimbell
Instead of these smaller systems, why not just use capitalism for the comparison? A lot of people (funnily enough, a lot of conservative, religious people) already accept that the free market can generate order from disparate elements, with no central planner. Why not just compare this to evolution? Why can't evolution be the free market of genes, with its own "invisible hand"?
Because that's not what teh Jebus says.
Reply
post #15 of 35
10/19/07 at 4:38pm
I think tons of the problems that evolutionary theories face are derived from how utterly inept most teachers of k-12 classes are in this country. For instance, consider how evolution is presented to kids.

There's nothing remotely teleological about these theories but--for whatever reason--they're almost always presented in teleological terms like "so and so adaptation came about because the species wanted to thrive." The simpler and less confusing way of putting that is that that adaptation just happened to benefit the members of the species that possessed it, which led them to outbreed and eventually take the place of members lacking that adaptation over the course of the generations. As it's currently portrayed, it's really, really easy for an intellectually dishonest person to knowingly lead peope to adopt the wrong view that evolution is just a rival atheistic teleological explanation for how things are the way they are.
Reply
post #16 of 35
10/19/07 at 4:47pm
Again, it doesn't matter how you can explain and/or convince somebody about it, when the fundamental belief system of the individual just requires you to believe that this is false.

Feel free to waste your time all day trying to phrase evolution in all different ways, as long as you belong to a denomination that forces you to take everything literally, you are just ignoring the core problem.
Reply
post #17 of 35
10/19/07 at 4:55pm
Believing that it isn't the right explanation--the thing you're required to believe if you think God exists and created the universe--and believing that it's a fundamentally bad/unscientific explanation are two different things. I don't think people would be as violently opposed to it if they had a more properly articulated explanation for the non-scientist at their disposal and a better understnading of scientific theory in general.

For instance, I'm a theist and believe that God created the universe. However, I don't think evolution is a bad explanation for how things are the way they are. IF you start out with the basic assumptions of naturalism, it's the theory that best accounts for the evidence available to us. Why that idea would seem threatening is beyond me.
Reply
post #18 of 35
10/19/07 at 5:14pm
"Why that idea would seem threatening is beyond me."

It's threatening because if you are a Christian fundamentalist, your whole faith is based in the literal interpretation of the Bible. Evolution conflicts with the the creation story as explained in Genesis. The more fundamentalist you are, the less space there is for any type of non literal explanation. In their view, evolution undermines the Word of God, and of course that would be deemed threatening if you saw things that way.

That's why you see people explaining away things saying "well after all one day for God is not literally one day for us", or "the devil planted dinosaur bones", etc. However you explain creation, if it messes with the time line and order described in Genesis, is a direct contradiction to the Word, and anathema.

If that perplexes people, I recommend you pay a visit to your local pentecostal or evangelical Church.
Reply
post #19 of 35
10/19/07 at 5:50pm
Cuchulain, it's hard to take you seriously when you talk about "evidence" for evolution, yet in the same paragraph proclaim you're a theist.

If you're going to believe irrational nonsense for which zero evidence exists in support, and tons of evidence against, don't cherry pick. Go all out!
Reply
post #20 of 35
10/19/07 at 6:02pm
Sadly this is what most of these arguments come to in the religion forum, no matter what the topic is!
Reply
post #21 of 35
10/19/07 at 8:09pm
Given the persistence of horrible strawman arguments against evolution, there's certainly some kind of inability to grasp the concept. I think what happens is fundamentalists know there's a conflict with Biblical literalism and learn only enough about it so they can get to a point where they think they can safely dismiss it and put it out of their minds. As soon as they hear "violates the second law of thermodynamics" or "like a tornado in a junkyard assembling a 747", they can roll their eyes and not worry about it anymore. All they really need to be aware of is some nice born-again scienticians say its a flawed idea. Dissonance resolved. Time to pick up the kids from school.
Reply
post #22 of 35
10/19/07 at 10:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ElCapitanAmerica
"Why that idea would seem threatening is beyond me."

It's threatening because if you are a Christian fundamentalist, your whole faith is based in the literal interpretation of the Bible. Evolution conflicts with the the creation story as explained in Genesis. The more fundamentalist you are, the less space there is for any type of non literal explanation. In their view, evolution undermines the Word of God, and of course that would be deemed threatening if you saw things that way.

That's why you see people explaining away things saying "well after all one day for God is not literally one day for us", or "the devil planted dinosaur bones", etc. However you explain creation, if it messes with the time line and order described in Genesis, is a direct contradiction to the Word, and anathema.

If that perplexes people, I recommend you pay a visit to your local pentecostal or evangelical Church.
See, I think that sort of reading of the first two chapters of Genesis--and I belong to a church that supports the "sola scriptura" doctrine--is just, well, retarded. While all Biblical literalists support the idea that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, we all also assent to the idea that its inspired authors were also humans at a certain point and place in human history. Holding that the doublet concerning Creation in Genesis should be interpreted as a modern scientific text is just weirdly wrong. (The Bible itself relates its own limitied scope in the New Testament with a line that says that if all the water on earth were turned to ink the resources for transcribing it would run dry beofre the task was completed. Something tells me the creation of the cosmos is a bit more complex than ten plus years of sermons). The accounts in Genesis are both mainly concerned with pointing to God as the cause of all things and both accounts employ heavy symbolism in the order of creation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Overlord
Cuchulain, it's hard to take you seriously when you talk about "evidence" for evolution, yet in the same paragraph proclaim you're a theist.

If you're going to believe irrational nonsense for which zero evidence exists in support, and tons of evidence against, don't cherry pick. Go all out!
I'm really not picking cherries here. First, the strongest arguments against the existence of God--like the strongest arguments for the existence of God--are logically sound but their soundness can be disputed.

Secondly, the evidence I cited is open to interpretation. If your interpretation is guided by notions such as Occam's Razor, "nature plays fair," and other naturalist assumptions, then the idea that all all life is just the inevitable result of matter spreading out and cooling down over a very long time in ideal conditions (perhaps a single cosmos out of an infinite number of other cosmos) is reasonable based on the current evidence.

If your basic assumption about the nature of reality is that there exists a Supreme Being who set all things in motion, the evidence curretly available to us doesn't really back that up but it doesn't rule it out either.
Reply
post #23 of 35
10/22/07 at 2:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Overlord
If you're going to believe irrational nonsense for which zero evidence exists in support, and tons of evidence against, don't cherry pick.
2nd law of thermodynamics: entropy will increase to a maximum.

Reverse the teleogy, we find that entropy does not exist at the point of the 'Big Bang' . . . therefore, order increases as we track creation back to the origin point. You get to the singularity, order is increased to the maximum.

That sounds like a perfectly fine 'scientific' definition of the 'Mind of God.' Of course, you can call it whatever you please, but once we reach the origin point of the Universe, science doesn't have any answers. No theory exists as how to how matter (in fact, all of the matter that exists in the Universe) could exist within a singularity - the concept is internally incoherent. A singularity exists as a hole in the fabric of the material universe.

I'm not saying you should believe in God. But don't give me any bullshit about there being 'plenty of evidence' saying that such a thing could not exist. No evidence exists at all as to what the origin singularlity was, or how it is related to the universe as it exists today. Science cannot answer that question. By trying to answer it we become trapped in an unstable hermeneutic loop, and find ourselves facing the limit of what we can know.

Beyond that limit, you either believe in a purpose or you don't. Your choice. No evidence exists either way, as the threshold of what we can know about the universe (in particular - the condition in an origin point singularity necessarily postulated by the Big Bang) is beyond our ability to measure. That isn't some supernatural word game. If you can't measure something, you cannot make a reasoned scientific inquiry into it. We cannot measure the origin singularity. Anything dealing with that point is necessarily an article of faith.

Don't try feeding me any superstring bullshit either. Superstring is a house of cards built upon fundamentally untestable scientific theories. If you can't test the theory, it's irrelevant to the core concept of science.
Reply
post #24 of 35
10/22/07 at 2:33pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zhukov
2nd law of thermodynamics: entropy will increase to a maximum.

Reverse the teleogy, we find that entropy does not exist at the point of the 'Big Bang' . . . therefore, order increases as we track creation back to the origin point. You get to the singularity, order is increased to the maximum.

That sounds like a perfectly fine 'scientific' definition of the 'Mind of God.' Of course, you can call it whatever you please, but once we reach the origin point of the Universe, science doesn't have any answers. No theory exists as how to how matter (in fact, all of the matter that exists in the Universe) could exist within a singularity - the concept is internally incoherent. A singularity exists as a hole in the fabric of the material universe.

I'm not saying you should believe in God. But don't give me any bullshit about there being 'plenty of evidence' saying that such a thing could not exist. No evidence exists at all as to what the origin singularlity was, or how it is related to the universe as it exists today. Science cannot answer that question. By trying to answer it we become trapped in an unstable hermeneutic loop, and find ourselves facing the limit of what we can know.

Beyond that limit, you either believe in a purpose or you don't. Your choice. No evidence exists either way, as the threshold of what we can know about the universe (in particular - the condition in an origin point singularity necessarily postulated by the Big Bang) is beyond our ability to measure. That isn't some supernatural word game. If you can't measure something, you cannot make a reasoned scientific inquiry into it. We cannot measure the origin singularity. Anything dealing with that point is necessarily an article of faith.

Don't try feeding me any superstring bullshit either. Superstring is a house of cards built upon fundamentally untestable scientific theories. If you can't test the theory, it's irrelevant to the core concept of science.
You apparently never got to one of my posts in the "The Christian Right Disrupts..." thread. Allow me to repost myself based on you bringing up that absurd "creationist trying to use science" chestnut on thermodynamics:

First off, Order or Entropy isn't quite the question you're looking to ask. The Thermodynamic definition of Entropy is related to the second law of thermodynamics, and involves sporadic changes occurring to a system already in a state of Equilibrium to a disordered state. You can make a case for using the statistical definition of Entropy, but from a creation of the universe point of view, the actual question you want to ask is how did Order rise from a chaotic system.

A chaotic system forming into a coherent system seems odd, save for the fact that those of us with an understanding of Chaos Mathematics and it's subset, fractal geometry, understand that there is actually order in chaotic systems. Truly random systems follow deterministic patterns based on their initial conditions. Math geeks today are using this to get better and better at predicting the weather.

Mentioning entropy sounds like the tired old "Intelligent Design" argument that life forming violates the second law of thermodynamics. If this were true, then snowflakes would be impossible as well, as they are complex structures created out of a chaotic system. Also, the second law states that Entropy within a closed system, where no matter or energy escapes (i.e. this universe), cannot decrease, but parts can decrease as long as there is a corresponding increase elsewhere within the system. Thus, the earth can grow and become more complex thanks to energy transfered from the sun, who suffers an offsetting increase of entropy via nuclear reactions.
Reply
post #25 of 35
10/22/07 at 2:50pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zhukov
I'm not saying you should believe in God. But don't give me any bullshit about there being 'plenty of evidence' saying that such a thing could not exist. No evidence exists at all as to what the origin singularlity was, or how it is related to the universe as it exists today. Science cannot answer that question. By trying to answer it we become trapped in an unstable hermeneutic loop, and find ourselves facing the limit of what we can know.
Additionally, me again from that same thread, actually responding to You:

I never understand when anyone makes that type of assertion. Just because we haven't yet in no way means that we one day won't be able to describe everything scientifically. Einstein's Theories aren't even a century old. Our ability to design computers capable of faster and faster calculations has been rising exponentially, and with the advent of quantum computing, may even accellerate beyond. We've mapped the Human Genome, know how to clone replicas of other species, and we can split atoms. We've accomplished more scientifically in the past century than everything previously combined. What part of historically observable data regarding human accomplishments leads you to believe we have scientific limits?

We may occupy a infinitesimal percentage of a very large universe, but I don't see how that places us in "limited place" within it. The only boundry we have is based on our resources, and the fact that the earth and our sun do have eventual expiration dates. Sure random chance could wipe us out at any time, and if we one day find out that FTL (Faster than Light) travel is simply not possible, we may have a definitive expiration date as a species ourselves. Until then, I don't see anything that says we aren't capable of understanding everything within a scientific framework.
Reply
post #26 of 35
10/22/07 at 6:05pm
I appreciate the bold lettering. It highlights the danger of a little bit of knowledge.

I don't need a lecture on how the second law of thermodynamics works. Ordered systems arise from disorder as entropy increases. However these ordered systems are interdependent pieces of a single unified system, one in which disorder is necessarily increasing - like how ordered system increase on Earth even as the sun burns away its energy, thereby contributing to net increase in entropy. Going the other direction, you find the opposite of total entropic disorder - a unified singularity. Science repeatedly bears out the theory that all matter within the universe is still somehow fundamentally unified in nature, regardless of distance. New theories will necessarily be formulated to deal with this apparent contradiction. We may be heading toward a basic incoherence in the foundation of our scientific understanding of the universe; we may simply find our theories to be incomplete and have to replace them with newer theories; or we may crack the theory of everything and bring a science based utopia to the Earth. Guess which possibility is most likely?

Scientific theory is transient. It's worth is translated into its ability to help us understand the universe we live in, and to make predictive frameworks based upon that. Swinging science like an invincible stick that will bear out the answers to all things is as stupid as pretending the Bible is a literal account of what really happened. The partisans on both sides of the debate need to stop acting like they, and they alone, hold the keys to the kingdom. It shouldn't be so insanely circular to discuss the readily mystifying intersections where faith and reason collide.

Dawkins may be a smart guy, but he hasn't discovered shit. He coined a term that seeped into the pop culture. Einstein, Newton, Leibniz - this might surprise you, but they were all men of tremendous faith. Tremendous reason as well. Why in the world is this so impossible for most people to understand?
Reply
post #27 of 35
10/22/07 at 6:10pm
Quite frankly it reeks of tragic arrogance for Dawkins to stand on the shoulders of such giants and piss on them from above. Sanctimonious asshole.
Reply
post #28 of 35
10/22/07 at 6:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zhukov
Quite frankly it reeks of tragic arrogance for Dawkins to stand on the shoulders of such giants and piss on them from above. Sanctimonious asshole.
It is sanctimonious of you to "piss on Dawkins", considering you apparently haven't read his most important work- The God Delusion. If you had, you probably wouldn't list Einstein amongst your "men of faith." Unless, of course, you disagreed with Dawkins' meticulous research due to your own exhaustive investigative efforts.

Aristotle believed in five "elements", including the divine Aether. He thought that stars were fundamentally different from the sun, and rejected the notion that the Milky Way was composed of thousands of "suns." He had very strange ideas about procreation, including animals spawning from (not in, but from) mud.

I piss all over these antiquated notions. Don't you? We shouldn't cling to obviously erroneous superstition simply because the propounder is a giant in some other arena of human endeavor. Newton wants to discuss gravity? Fine. He wants me to grant deference to mystical bullshit he couldn't possibly have any evidence to support, no thanks. Also, wouldn't ignoring Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the vast majority of the other "founding fathers" of America be disrespectful? They were openly contemptuous and hostile towards religion, by the way.

**Also, the moment any person espouses a belief system that teaches its adherents that non-believers will suffer an eternity of torment, or that non-believers should be the target of the penal code, is the moment I believe they have lost the right to have their beliefs treated with respect.
Reply
post #29 of 35
10/22/07 at 7:26pm
I can't speak for Overlord or Death Surge, but It's not a fundamental respect for what we now consider "unknowable" that I find problematic. The singularity's an awe-inspiring thing to contemplate. What's troubling for me is that the crusading faithful have used the "currently unknowable" as a philosophical fertilizer to help spread their religious beliefs since the beginning of recorded history, for better or for worse.
Reply
post #30 of 35
10/22/07 at 7:41pm
The "God of the Gaps" phenomenom is live and well.
Reply
post #31 of 35
10/23/07 at 9:03am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zhukov
I don't need a lecture on how the second law of thermodynamics works. Ordered systems arise from disorder as entropy increases. However these ordered systems are interdependent pieces of a single unified system, one in which disorder is necessarily increasing - like how ordered system increase on Earth even as the sun burns away its energy, thereby contributing to net increase in entropy. Going the other direction, you find the opposite of total entropic disorder - a unified singularity. Science repeatedly bears out the theory that all matter within the universe is still somehow fundamentally unified in nature, regardless of distance. New theories will necessarily be formulated to deal with this apparent contradiction. We may be heading toward a basic incoherence in the foundation of our scientific understanding of the universe; we may simply find our theories to be incomplete and have to replace them with newer theories; or we may crack the theory of everything and bring a science based utopia to the Earth. Guess which possibility is most likely?
You keep referring to a unified singularity as the opposite of entropic disorder. What makes you think that this was true? A position that membranes in M-Theory (stepping past singular Super-String theory as you requested) is that the singularity that was the predecessor to the big bang was actually a collision between one or more p-branes. That implies that the matter within this universe was never a perfect harmonically ordered singularity.

Regardless, my repost was to simply state that you bringing up the second law of thermodynamics is meaningless as any sort of evidence that our current universe was or was not "intelligently designed".


Quote:
Originally Posted by Zhukov
Scientific theory is transient. It's worth is translated into its ability to help us understand the universe we live in, and to make predictive frameworks based upon that. Swinging science like an invincible stick that will bear out the answers to all things is as stupid as pretending the Bible is a literal account of what really happened. The partisans on both sides of the debate need to stop acting like they, and they alone, hold the keys to the kingdom. It shouldn't be so insanely circular to discuss the readily mystifying intersections where faith and reason collide.
That position simply doesn't make any sense. Absolutely, scientific theory is never static. It's constantly being modified as new theories take precedence based on newly obtained observal evidence. Old innefective positions are removed in place of new more effective ones.

Contrary to that, Faith is static. It has no evidence supporting it other than "We haven't explained it scientifically so therefore....", and rumors and heresay centuries old. While you can place varying degrees on the merit of it's moral and philosphical stances, to give it any weight as an explanation of how things work in the universe is patently absurd.
Reply
post #32 of 35
10/23/07 at 9:08am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zhukov
Einstein, Newton, Leibniz - this might surprise you, but they were all men of tremendous faith. Tremendous reason as well. Why in the world is this so impossible for most people to understand?
Sure, a lot of giants of the scientific community were men of faith. Mathematical wizard Blaise Pascal eloquently stated why via "Pascal's Gambit".

Summated, it essentially says:

* You live as though God exists.
- If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
- If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.

* You live as though God does not exist.
- If God exists, you go to hell: your loss is infinite.
- If God does not exist, you gain nothing & lose nothing.


It's oft referred to as "Pascal's Wager", because most betting men prefer to live as though God exists. There's better house odds.
Reply
post #33 of 35
10/23/07 at 11:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Death Surge
Contrary to that, Faith is static.
I really didn't want to post in another one of these threads, but this is just patently wrong.

Some may treat faith as static, but that doesn't mean it is. In fact, a lot of the principles of evolution could probably be applied to religion, as well, with certain traits winning out over others, new forms coming into being, etc. If faith were "static," the majority of the U.S. would be sacrificing sheep to the sun goddess or something rather than celebrating Christmas. And the road it took to get from one system to another is far from arbitrary, but quite dependent on the needs of each given society. Scientific thought is refined to reflect what is observable, and religious thought is refined to reflect what's needed emotionally, culturally, and communally. Neither is static.
Reply
post #34 of 35
10/23/07 at 1:30pm
Thread Starter 
I was speaking solely in terms of Cosmogony. Most religions evolve and adopt (very slowly) new cultural customs, and eventually incorporate present day customs, but from a cosmogony point of view, the flying spaghetti monster waved his noodlely appendage and the universe came into being. Christian scholars may revise what time scale a "Day" would use and even adopt the Big-Bang as the effect of the statement "Let there be Light" but the concept that God creating the universe in 7 days remains static.
Reply
post #35 of 35
10/23/07 at 1:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Death Surge
I was speaking solely in terms of Cosmogony. Most religions evolve and adopt (very slowly) new cultural customs, and eventually incorporate present day customs, but from a cosmogony point of view, the flying spaghetti monster waved his noodlely appendage and the universe came into being. Christian scholars may revise what time scale a "Day" would use and even adopt the Big-Bang as the effect of the statement "Let there be Light" but the concept that God creating the universe in 7 days remains static.
Depends on how you draw your analogies. If you're saying science is akin to a specific religion, like Christianity, then you're right. If you're saying that science is akin to Religion (which makes more sense to me, due to their respective scopes), you're not.

Christianity is just an aspect of religion, just as any given scientific concept (those that stick, like evolution, as well as those that don't, like the flat Earth hypothesis) is an aspect of science. Thus, while some of its adherents may accept its concept of cosmogony as permanent, this concept, itself, is far from it on a larger scale. Certain forms of religion may be rigid, but Religion, itself, isn't at all. There could be some sort of new spiritual need 200 years from now that rewrites all the rules.
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Religion A-Z
CHUD.com Community › Forums › POLITICS & RELIGION › Religion A-Z › Does Evolution cause Religious Fundamentalism?